Jack Fitzgerald forms ASSET coalition to end federal estate tax

In hopes to end the federal estate tax, Fitzgerald Auto Mall has teamed up with the owners of Silver Spring, Maryland-based Darcars Automotive Group, and 18 dealerships in Maryland, Virginia and Florida.

Jack Fitzgerald, who is the founder and owner of Kensington, Maryland-based Fitzgerald Auto Mall, wants to have the estate taxes paid so that his heirs won’t have to. Fitzgerald, who is 75 years old, said that he gets more interested in estate tax policy the longer he’s alive.

What the group wants instead is a 2% levy on adjusted gross income exceeding $1 million, with a goal of raising the estimated $20 billion the U.S. Treasury now collects annually from the estate tax. Fitzgerald said that as a result, he is already paying such a levy; however, the money is going toward annual life insurance premiums totaling $700,000.

The company currently has 12 locations in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Florida, and he estimates that he has about $20 million in coverage that his heirs can use to pay the estate tax and other expenses upon his death.

Fitzgerald has formed a group, Americans Standing for Simplification of the Estate Tax, or ASSET. He has also acquired the services of former U.S. Representative Phil English, a Pennsylvania Republican who was on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, as a lobbyist.

English believes that the $858 billion tax-cut deal that extends the estate tax for two years gives Fitzgerald and others with sufficient time to make their case. [via autonews - sub. required]